Mary Poppins’s Cameo Appearances in the Work of Andrei Tarkovsky

Joe Banks

This is a preliminary inquiry for a videotape
based on interpretations of concepts suggested by the anthropologist Donald Tuzin
and by the architect, artist, and theorist Le
Corbusier. The essence of this project can be
summarized by reference to Le Corbusier’s
surprisingly little-known axiom that “art is
the lightest of caresses, the breeze that gives
poetry to the rustle of leaves.”1

Jane and Michael sat at the window, watching for Mr. Banks to come home and listening to the sound of the East Wind blowing
through the branches of the cherry trees in the
Lane. The trees themselves, turning and bending in the half light, looked as though they had
gone mad and were dancing their roots out of
the ground. “There he is!” said Michael, pointing suddenly to a shape that banged heavily
against the gate. Jane peered through the
gathering darkness. “That’s not Daddy,” she
said. “It’s somebody else.”2

The facts of Mary Poppins’s story were
described in P. L. Travers’s biography and
popularized by Robert Stevenson’s classic
documentary film.3 What is less well-known
is Mary Poppins’s subsequent film cameo,
fifteen years later, above the concrete shells
and twisted steel, rusting, mechanized corpses that littered the sinister, irradiated Zone of
Andrei Tarkovsky’s dystopian masterpiece,
Stalker.4 The Stalker turns to his companions
and warns, “Listen, if you suddenly notice
something, or even feel something strange,
just turn right back.” Mary’s brief fly-past,
just out of shot, whips up a tailwind as she
makes haste, carried by the East Wind, to
attend urgent engagements elsewhere in
what was then the Soviet Union. Her unnerving presence registers only in the disturbed
motion of leaves and long grass, and in the
panicked reactions of the film’s hyperacute
protagonists.

The events described in Mary Poppins and
Stalker relate to a hypothesis proposed by
Donald Tuzin, a Professor of Anthropology
at the University of California, San Diego,
that “certain hitherto unnoticed links exist
between the auditory apparatus and a particular sensation that is widely interpreted
as signifying a supernatural presence”; that
“a certain type of naturally occurring sound
has a perceptual effect on some, possibly
many, animal species that is intrinsically
mysterious and thus anxiety-arousing; that
this sensation is humanly interpreted and
its accompanying anxiety cognitively
resolved by referring it to the mystery that is
allegedly inherent in the supernatural
realm.”5

These links are not, of course, unknown to
the many filmmakers and artists (such as,
for instance, John Cage) who have been profoundly influenced by their own (usually
accidental, childhood) encounters with Mary
Poppins. It is through these chance meetings
that fragmentary images of her trajectories
can be retrospectively traced—isolated
sightings that may yet one day even map out
comprehensive records of her itinerary. Mary
Poppins adapts to the specific conditions
of her temporal environment—manifesting
(despite her own characteristically abrupt
and dismissive denials) as the implicit personification of the benign, animistic, subjectively
“magical” forces of the East Wind and of
starlight. She has unhabituated access to the
aesthetic sensibilities and universal language
of newborn children, snakes, dogs, and
birds; understands the semantics and hears
the musical harmonies of natural environmental sound.

Tuzin argues that culturally-transmitted,
anthropomorphic interpretations of (and
responses to) natural meteorological sound
and air-pressure phenomena have their
origins in reflexes that humans share with
their mammalian relatives. This hypothesis
emerged from field-work among the Melanesian Ilahita Arapesh tribe, and from studies
of how ritual practices with low-frequency
bull-roarers by Arapesh Tambaran cult members reinforce the projection of divinity
onto the “calm before the storm” sensations,
which are interpreted by Tuzin as quasi-subliminal perceptions of infrasonic noise
signals produced by thunder from distant
electrical storms. These sensations belong
to a broader class of experiences of meteorological phenomena that are often associated
with mysterious or subjectively “magical”
sense-impressions.

The intention is not to suggest that Mary
Poppins or the scene in Stalker represent
anything more than vague semblances of religious experience (in the sense that religion
is normally understood), but, instead, to
suggest that precursor sensations, sense memories, and emotional responses can
be evoked by representations of related
meteorological phenomena. The importance
of this class of imagery in Romantic genre
poetry is discussed in detail in the military
intelligence analyst, naturalist, and poet
Geoffrey Grigson’s classic text, “The Harp of
Aeolus.”6

The calm before the storm; a sudden fall in
atmospheric pressure; changes in humidity
and the effects of increased ambient electrical field-charge on the skin; the rumble of
thunder; the crack of lightning; the scent
of naturally-occurring ozone; the susurration
of wind in reeds, trees, long grass and the
whispering breeze; the creaking of branches;
the motion of rivers under starlight; the rattle
of dry leaves tumbling across pavements;
and the unique anechoic properties of fresh
snowfall all evoke memories that remind us of
Mary’s influence on our world.

Mary Poppins also appears in Salvador Dali’s
paintings Geological Justice (1936) and The
Enigma of Hitler (ca. 1939), in the opening
sequences of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks
(1989–1991), Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound
(1945), and in 4’33“ by John Cage.